Church of the Beatitudes
Beauty and creativity are not only expressed in art, but also in architecture. The Gospel lessons for the Epiphany season in many of our Lutheran churches are from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount recorded in Matthew 5-7.
There is no doubt that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is the most famous sermon ever preached. It is perhaps also the most misunderstood. It is not a summary of the whole Christian faith. Rather it is a description of how the Christian demonstrates and lives his/her faith.
This is not a sermon on justification – of how a God saves a person. Rather it is entirely a sermon on sanctification – of how a person lives after God has saved him/her.
In order to understand this sermon, we must keep in mind the audience to whom it was preached and the purpose Jesus had in mind. The audience was, primarily, Jesus’ disciples, although the large crowds who had been following Jesus were evidently in the background listening in. The purpose of the sermon was to give the believers a better understanding of the God-pleasing life.
Instead of showing you another famous fresco of Jesus preaching to the crowds, this time we examine the church dedicated in honor of where Jesus most likely preached this Sermon. I had the privilege of visiting this church a number of years ago while on a pastors’ familiarization trip to Israel.
The church is called The Church of the Beatitudes.
It is an octagonal church – 8 sided for the 8 beatitudes (although there are actually 9 beatitudes). The church is on top of a hill overlooking the Sea of Galilee where Jesus conducted most of His ministry.
The windows are at eye-level so people in the chapel can worship and be inspired as they see what Jesus saw. There are 8 windows inscribed with each of the beatitudes in Latin.
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The term beatitude comes from the predominant word in Matthew 5:1-12: “Blessed.” The word is intoned again and again. One author says, “It sounds like the bells of heaven, ringing down into this unblessed world from the cathedral spires of the kingdom inviting all people to enter.”
Jesus is speaking to His disciples in this sermon. He is talking to his believers, to you and me. And he is calling us blessed. Jesus is not telling us how to become blessed. He is rather describing the blessedness that already belongs to all believers in Christ. We are spiritually blessed as members of his kingdom.
Outside the church is the mount. This mount has a natural theatre that would have been like an open auditorium with natural acoustics. Pilgrims are known to have commemorated this site since at least the 4th century.
The modern church, created in the Byzantine style, is maintained and overseen by the Franciscan Order. It was built between 1936 and 1938. It is near the site of the fourth century Byzantine ruins of the first church commemorating Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
Whether this is the exact spot where Jesus preached, it is in the general area and provides a similar setting to where Jesus would have delivered his famous sermon. As Dr. Jerome Murphy-O’Conner, a Dominican priest, and Professor of New Testament, puts it: “From here one can see virtually all the places in which Jesus lived and worked.”
Whether the Church of the Beatitudes is built on the very location of Jesus’ Sermon is really immaterial. Once you step inside the church, the beauty of what Jesus taught is portrayed in the stained glass windows, the altar, pews, octagonal walls… really, throughout the entire architecture.
Michael Zarling
For the first 8 years of my ministry, I served at Faith Lutheran Church, an exploratory congregation in Radcliff, KY. I presently serve at Epiphany Lutheran Church and Wisconsin Lutheran School (WLS) in Racine, WI. I am also very involved with our youth as the WLS head soccer coach and the head counselor for WELS Training Camp, a youth camp for 3rd – 9th graders. I have been married to Shelley for 20 years. Together we have 4 beautiful daughters – Abigail, Miriam, Lydia and Gabrielle. We also have 2 dogs – Messi and Mia – named after Lionel Messi and Mia Hamm (the Zarling family really likes soccer!)
3 Comments
mrsjv
I agree, this is a beautiful church, but I must disagree with this statement. “This is not a sermon on justification – of how a God saves a person. Rather it is entirely a sermon on sanctification – of how a person lives after God has saved him/her.”
After God saves us, we live a sinful life. The beatitudes tell the believer what he cannot do. By our own we cannot meet these demands. We fail every day. But have hope! We have a Savior who did meet these demands. Because of what Jesus has done, God looks upon all believers as people who have satisfied the beatitudes.
For years I dreaded the Sermon on the Mount. It just pointed me to all my failures. I tried harder and harder to be a good believer. I couldn’t understand why I didn’t show my love for Jesus by loving others. I tried and failed every day. I thought the gospel was for unbelievers to make them into believers, but that now that I was a Christian, my life would be different. I would do good things, because I was so grateful for what Jesus had done for me. But I didn’t. All I saw was sin and more sin. I still couldn’t please God even as a believer. Where was my thankfulness? My gratitude? My praise?
I needed the gospel. I needed the God from heaven to come and rescue me. That’s just what he did! Now when I fail every day to meet the demands of the Beatitudes, I thank my God for my Jesus. I thank God for the one who came and did live that perfect life in my place. Nothing can separate me from the love of God in Jesus. “It is finished.” The gospel is so needed in the daily life of the believer. There is no peace without the gospel of Jesus. Now that I am a Christian I receive the benefit of everything Jesus did perfectly. Jesus earned my new life, not me.
Yes, Jesus was talking to sanctified people. He was telling them that the work he began in them at the time he justified them he would continue to do. The Sermon on the Mount is about Jesus. Jesus said that all the scripture teaches us about him. The Sermon on the Mount tells us that we need Jesus. He is perfect.
Molly Parsons
Thanks for your comment Janis. I was thinking similar thoughts, but you worded it very well. I don’t really like reading the Sermon on the Mount either. It just reminds me that I am thoroughly evil and I haven’t outgrown the need for a Savior. We always want to categorize portions of scripture into law, gospel, and sanctification. Maybe we need another category called, “law for believers.” (Is there a term for that already?)
Michael Zarling
Thank you Janis and Molly for your thoughts. The three chapters of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount are very similar to Exodus 20 where Moses records the Ten Commandments. In both instances, God is telling believers how they are to live.
In His Sermon, Jesus is speaking to those who are believers. Matthew records that “his disciples came to him” (Matthew 5:1). They are Jesus’ main audience. The Beatitudes are addressed to only those who already in Christ’s Kingdom, for only they can be truly blessed. Only believers can be salt and light in the world (5:13-16). Jesus also speaks to those who already have a relationship as sons and daughters of God, for only they can refer to God in prayer as “Our Father in heaven” (6:9).
Jesus’ words are difficult to hear because He employs His Law as a rule by which believers’ lives are to be governed. We strive to please God because He has made us His children and heirs.
For three chapters, Jesus tells us how to live as Christians. But all we have to do is compare His rules for living with our real lives in order to realize how miserably we fail to measure up to His perfect standards (5:48). That’s what makes us so uncomfortable as we read these verses. No one is ever comfortable being a failure.
That’s why we read elsewhere in Scriptures that Jesus makes us holy and blameless through the washing with water and the Word (Ephesians 5:26-27). Though we cannot attain God’s standard of perfection in this life, as Christians to whom Jesus’ Sermon is addressed, we want to make daily and continual progress toward His standard. And – wonder of wonders! – while we keep trying and keep falling short (Romans 3:23), our heavenly Father is pleased with our feeble efforts and pronounces them perfect because Christ’s perfect righteousness is ours through faith (2 Corinthians 5:21)!
Jesus gives us His rules for holy living. We strive and fail to live the holy life Jesus demands in His Sermon. But thanks be to God that through the blood of Jesus and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, the heavenly Father looks upon our failed attempts as gloriously successful! It is through Jesus that we can be blessed, be salt and light, turn the other cheek, love our enemies, etc!
Jesus tells us what to do, then He gives us His power in Word and Sacrament to do it, and then He perfects our doing with His blood.